2010 April

Archive for April, 2010

We’ve received word that the fellows at Chaosium are holding a sale this week, in honor of the Donner party. Yeah, they’re funny like that. I’ll let the press release tell you more:

The Chaosium.com Cannibal Sale has begun!

To celebrate the eventual rescue of the Donner party and the Feast of St. George (Chaosium assumes no connection between these events…) Chaosium.com is holding our annual sale. Save 30% on Call of Cthulhu and Basic Roleplaying books, monographs, and over 100 PDFs from April 24th – May 1st, 2010. While everyone may not like cannibals, they’re quite fond of everyone else.

So, anyone who has an appetite for Mythos materials should swing by Chaosium.com’s catalog and select a few choice cuts.

Stronghold Games has announced that it has acquired the rights to reprint the classic Parker Brothers game Survive!. It is somewhat odd that this gem went out-of-print in the United States years ago, given that it has sold 1.5 million copies worldwide. If you haven’t heard of Survive!, players represent leaders trying to shepherd their people off a volcanic island about to erupt. The waters surrounding the island are teeming with whales, sharks, and even sea serpents. This is one of the most vicious little games I’ve ever played. The new version will be entitled Survive: Escape from Atlantis, and will receive direct input from the original designer, Julian Courtland-Smith. The game is scheduled currently for release in Q4 of 2010.

Since Tenacious Games went out of business there was some doubt as to whether The Spoils CCG would ever produce a new set. When Arcane Tinmen acquired the rights to produce The Spoils, a limited number of tournaments and casual play sessions restarted for the game. Now, for the first time, Arcane Tinmen is producing a new expansion set release. The new set is called Seed II – Gloamspike’s Revenge. Arcane Tinmen is offering full sets of every card in the release and deeply discounted package deals through participating local game stores and via direct sales.

The first half of 2010 seems to herald the oncoming zombie plague. Flying Frog Productions has released three expansions for their popular Last Night on Earth game as well as reprinting their base game. Lock ‘n Load has fought past a variety of production problems to release All Things Zombie: The Boardgame, a tactical boardgame based on the popular ATZ wargame. Zombie State Games will soon release Zombie State: Diplomacy of the Dead, a strategic-level area control game where world leaders try to protect their populations against the zombie apocalypse. Steve Jackson Games is coming out with Zombie Dice, a nice “press your luck” dice game filler. Twilight Creations is releasing Zombies!!! 9: Ashes to Ashes, an expansion for their popular zombie game allowing you to investigate a cemetery. Even the popular PopCap PC game Plants vs. Zombies has seen iPhone and iPod Touch releases of that game this year.

Can gamers just not get enough zombies? Or are there too many zombie games for our own good?

From time to time, new roleplaying gamers – or parents that play RPGs, or gamers trying to bring their buddies over from consoles and PCs – ask me to recommend the best way to get them into tabletop D&D. Lately, I’ve been at a bit of a loss, not having any one set or edition to universally put forth as a gateway into the system without going way, way back to ancient basic boxed sets and such. Wizards of the Coast must be aware of this perceived lack of friendly entry-point products: not only is a new “red box” basic set on the way later this year, but earlier today, WotC also posted Monster Slayers: The Heroes of Hesiod, a child-oriented D&D variant stripped down to the bare minimum. Targeting age 6 and up, the free 14-page PDF provides everything needed except dice and pencils, and boasts a play time of “as little as fifteen minutes or as long as an hour.” The game looks like a young players’ D&D Miniatures or a D&D: Fourth Edition-lite boardgame, but it just might be a more comfortable starting point for newbies, or a fun diversion for seasoned gamers.

Continuing the WWII-themed gaming news, in May, Days of Wonder will be releasing an expansion for its boardgame Memoir ’44. The new Breakthrough Expansion kit will contain two extra-large, 9-panel, double-sided map boards (13 x 17 hexes deep). Also included will be 15 scenarios for use with this expansion, designed by Jacques David and Memoir ’44 author, Richard Borg. These scenarios cover the Western and Eastern Fronts, as well as the Mediterranean and Pacific Theaters. Breakthrough is not a stand-alone set, and requires the base game to play. It is strongly recommended for some of the scenarios that you own other previously released expansions for the game. The MSRP is $30.00.

Panzer General: Allied Assault is a card-based wargame, on the abstract end as these things go, for Xbox Live Arcade (published by Ubisoft). Also, it’s a card-based wargame for… cards and a wargame. Both are developed by Petroglyph Games, and the interesting bit is that Petroglyph doesn’t appear to have bought out a tabletop publisher, or subcontracted anything, or… even redesigned the game. That’s right – we now live in a world where an Xbox developer can make a board game, and use the proceeds to make a board game. I mean, I could be wrong but these cats do not look like dabblers to me (and if there’s one thing I’ve seen a few of, it’s dabblers).

The sequel, Panzer General: Russian Assault, is paper only, out in September. Another card-based game, Guardians of Graxia, will hit simultaneously in summer for tabletop and PC. I’m glad to see them branch out beyond WWII theming, which doesn’t really float my U-boat, but I’m also (weirdly enough) glad to see them stick close to home gameplay-wise… this seems like a rich vein.

PAX East 2010 recently landed in Boston, MA, and being a local, loyal Cave dweller Lee Valentine was more than happy to check out the show for us. From nifty card and board games to big-budget electronic titles, the Penny Arcade Expo doesn’t disappoint, as Lee tells us in his report on the first ever PAX East. There’s even a Wil Wheaton cameo – how can you not give it a read?

With the impending release of the Apple iPad we are bound to see new games intended specifically for that platform. One of the first hobby games getting ported over to the new touchscreen media device is Days of Wonder’s hit game Small World. Small World is a fantasy wargame that has won Games Magazine’s traditional game of the year award. We’ve also reviewed it on OgreCave.Com. The iPad release will cost $4.99 and will be available from Apple’s App Store. This version will only handle two players in a face-to-face, hot seat mode of play by sharing the device. Unfortunately it seems that there won’t be a five-player version over the wireless network in this release, but at least this is a start. Future expansions are planned for the product for separate purchase and download.